The Warm Sun
The Garmin Instinct warmed up in the Spanish sun while charging.
After several days of playing with a Pi-Hole I both enjoy using it and feel guilty. I feel guilty about blocking adverts from certain websites and sources because I don’t want to impact their revenue streams. At the same time I really want to block ads from two specific sources. Pre-roll videos for Plex, YoUTube and other sites, and video adverts from iOS games.
I want to block pre-roll adverts, especially from Plex now, because it’s Christmas themed. As a single person I don’t want to be reminded of the family life that is not mine directly. I don’t want to suffer from ROMO (Reminder of Mission Out) as I’m about to watch a program about people flying DC-3 and DC-4 aircrafts in the North West Territories.
With YouTube I want to block pre-roll ads, more than other ads, because sometimes you decide that content is not worth watching after ten seconds. When you’re browsing like this you give up when you have to watch 30 seconds to two minutes of pre-roll. It’s too much, especially when you always see the same advert, or the same three adverts.
A decade or two ago I said that the problem with satellite broadcasting is that we see the same four or five adverts at every break. If you watch three programs you might see the same adverts five times. That’s several minutes wasted, for the consumer, and a waste of money for the advertiser. I remember seeing an ad after seeing it once. Forcing me to see it five times just gets me to tune out and stop watching tv, and youtube, and podcasts.
With iOS games I want to block adverts because it’s always the same crappy games. It’s adverts for pay to win games. If the game maker stopped making crappy games he wouldn’t need to make crappy adverts, and then make people pay for crappy games. He would just make crappy games, and people would play them. How much of the cost we pay for some app games is to pay to be overloaded with bad adverts?
I hear you say “but just use Apple arcade. It’s 6 CHF per month and you have a choice of games and no adverts. This goes back to the topic I mentioned in other posts. If you pay 25 CHF per month for Switch online, 6 CHF per month for Switch, and x amount for another service then it quickly becomes hundreds of francs per year. In this context it’s cheaper to get a console and buy games when they’re reduced in price due to Christmas or other promotions.
With YouTube you can pay for premium and stop seeing ads too, but do you want to pay to see user generated content via a company that demonetised your content because their celebrities poisoned homeless people, for views?
I experimented with Ad guard locally, and I also looked at the app on iOS. 5 CHF per year for the iOS version. The price of installing it on a Pi locally. I stopped using Ad Guard locally because it seemed to be blocking 192.168.1.1 and I want access to that IP. I also found that the UI was less fun. No interesting graphs and less active oversight of what the app is doing.
Right Wing Media like to spread hate and disinformation. These sites are usually inundated in ads. By using ad blockers we make sure that if, by accident, we visit their sites we do not help them generate revenue from adverts.
It would be nice to whitelist websites, from which adverts are accepted, and blacklist websites from which I refuse to see ads. At the moment the closest you get to incremental blocking is to disable blocking for five, ten, 15 or more time. This is a workaround but not a solid solution.
I would like to white list quite a few magazines, news sites and personal websites, without getting ads from sites that I have blacklisted. I want ads from my blog, and the Guardian to show up, for example, but not from The Times of England, or The Sun, or the Daily Mail and other such sites.
When you block Google Ads you block ads on large websites and small websites. Small legitimate websites suffer when we don’t see ads, so that’s why we need the option to whitelist Google ads on this site and that site, but not those other sites.
Anyone who has tried web browsing on a feature phone or low ram Raspberry Pi has experienced how slow websites can be. Part of the reason for the sites being so slow is the volume of ads that need to be downloaded, but also displayed. A website that is a few lines of text and one or two images loads fine. Commercial websites inundated with ads do not.
In low bandwidth areas, or places with machines that have limited RAM it makes a lot of sense to use a Pi Hole, to make the web more accessible.
Ad blocking can be about quality of experience, for example in trying to block pre-roll on video streaming services or video ads on iOS games. In other cases it can be about seeing what certain news sources are writing, without contributing to their business model. News organisations that spread disinformation can be visited without helping fund yet more disinformation.
We need Pi-Hole to be like web browser plugins. “White List this site, and that site”. We could support the newspapers, blogs and magazines we like, without supporting those we do not. When ads are not obnoxious I don’t mind seeing them.
Ads make the web functional. By blocking them we are affecting content creators. We should use ad blockers sparingly. My site has too little traffic for ad blockers to make a difference but other sites do, and it’s a shame to see sites that we appreciate fail, because we used ad blockers when visiting them.
I have been putting the 80/20 running rule into practice. The principal is simple. Instead of running to your max you run at a comfortable pace for most of your running instead. Instead of pushing yourself to be fast, you push yourself to have endurance. You train at a pace that is 80 percent or less of your maximum, to perform better when you race.
The concept is rational. You could train to your max but by doing so you tire yourself emotionally, physically and mentally. Instead of improving you hit a wall. The 80 percent rule builds on the idea that by training consistently at a lower intensity 80 percent of the time you build stamina and endurance.
With the Garmin program by Greg I find myself having to slow down, rather than speed up. I find that I need to run at a pace that is easy, rather than strenuous. With other coaches they say “do 150-200 steps for 30 seconds, then do glides etc.” Others say “Run this distance” and “Now run that distance”.
I prefer the coaching I have now. “Run at this pace for that duration” It isn’t about distance, and it isn’t about duration so much as it is about pace. I have to consciously tell myself to slow down, to take it easy. It isn’t that far from running pace. I know I can run faster. I need the discipline to slow down.
I am avoiding speed because I want to keep my knees from hurting. I want to strengthen them gradually, by training at a lower intensity, to give them the time to adapt and toughen up. This isn’t about speed. This is about being able to run sustainably for longer distances, without discomfort. Today I felt that I am getting to that goal. I felt that I could run for longer.
I actually stopped running because a dog, that was not kept on a lead, showed interest in me, and then charged me. I left the road and it followed, so I stopped in a field. For an instant I was convinced that I would be bitten today. It felt that way. I thought it had finally happened again.
Normally I would avoid a car, especially one that stops there, because usually dogs jump out and tend to charge. I didn’t turn around and change route. My habit of turning around and choosing another route, is justified after what happened. I hate that I keep being attacked. No, the dog didn’t bite me, but it did run after me. Dogs do that. That’s why I walked with hiking sticks before. That’s why on one route I picked up a big branch.
Dogs scare me. They threaten me several times a year. If I had continued running it would have bit me. I had to stop, so that it would stop. I am tired of overcoming my fear of dogs on every walk. I am even more tired of having my fears confirmed by these attacks, several times a day. I class a dog that threatens or runs after me as an attack.
Next time I will walk the other way. I will not walk towards a car that is stopping. Once again my fear is justified.
It’s a shame I was running low on battery last night because I was at the Fanzone in Geneva for the Italy Vs. France match. I managed to stream a few moments of the game. Since the Italians have won this game we can look forward to a lot of noise on Sunday if and when they win.Â
Perfect for me and live streaming.
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The Penalty.
Post match euphoria for the Italians, by then the French were already heading home.
For years I have worn Suunto, Garmin and Apple watches. During this time I have tracked hikes, climbing, scuba diving, snorkeling, swimming and more. Recently I felt the desire to wear a Casio watch as I used to do when I was a child.
Over the years these “watches” have given you live information about barometric pressure, altitude, depth, and other information but with time they gave you the chance to track what you were doing by GPS. After this they started to track your steps and your heart rate 24 hours a day, except for when you’re charging. It went from being a watch that you used for the time, and to track acvities. Now they track everything.
The only time they do not track you is when you’re charging the watches.
The advantage of a Casio watch is that you can wear it for years in a row, without ever taking it off, except for when you’re flying, before you need to replace the battery. You get to the end of the day and you don’t need to charge it.
Of course, you don’t need to wear it for three to five years in a row. You can take it off when you’re showering, sleeping or other. You can even take it off for a tan, if that’s what you desire.
What sets the GBA-900 apart from other Casio and smart watches is that it gives an analogue display, rather than a digital one. it gives the time with a digital display but it’s small and hidden behind the hour and minute hands at certain times of day.
The advantage of an analogue watch is that you know the time as fast as a digital watch, once you take some time to re-habituate yourself to reading a less precise time display. I say less precise because you need to re-learn the art of reading analogue time.
It automatically counts the number of steps you take in a day and estimates the amount of energy you burned in a day. If you want to track a walk then it’s simple. You start the timer when you start your walk, and stop the time at the end of your walk. It then uses the time information and your phone’s location data to extrapolate the track of your walk. You can then get it to sync with the phone and keep track of your walks over time.
I found that with the Xiaomi activity Band 7 and the active band eight I would get false manipulations with the touch screen. With the casio that’s impossible, due to it using button presses.
If you’re playful then, at night, you can charge the fluorescent paint on the hour and minute hands with a flashlight or your phone’s light. At night you can then check the time, by looking at the glowing hands, rather than pressing a button.
Do you remember that 80s or 90s sound. The Beep beep that we would hear once an hour, every hour? This watch allows you to live with that signal notification. It could be useful, if you want to keep track of time, without constantly staring at your watch. “Beep beep”, time for lunch soon.
The Apple watch nags you about washing your hands for long enough. Garmin and Apple nag you about being too static for too long. By using a Casio watch you escape the gamification that makes Apple and Garmin so annoying to use. It was fun, until you realise how unforgiving they are, streak wise, and until you realise that they’re designed to get you adddicted, rather than interested in your own progress. I like wearing a simpler device, especially while I walk more than I cycle, hike, or other.
Over a period of a few days I have turned my WordPress blog into a fediverse instance. The process took some trial and error. In the end it was quit easy and there are three steps.
Step One: Have a WordPress Instance
The first step is to have a WordPress blog/CMS. You can start with an existing website, that you are willing to have on the fediverse, or you can install the WordPress CMS in another director and use that as a dedicated Fediverse CMS.
Step Two
Go the the plugins tab and add the activityPub plugin. Once this is done your blog will work as a fediverse instance. When someone subscribes to your instance via Calckey they will be able to read entire blog posts within Calckey, as if the blog was written natively. They can also comment but this is one way. You will need to check for comments and replies manually.
Step Three
The third step is to install the webfinger plugin for wordpress. This was the most complicated challenge for me, because webfinger expects to find the .well-known directory in the root of the website rather than the directory where the blog may actually be.
If your blog is in the root then you’re fine, your WordPress blog is now a Fediverse instance.
If you’re like me, and webfinger points to the wrong place then I have a simple solution.
Go to the webfinger lookup url and type your username. It will show you a get https line with where it expects to find your json file. Copy this into the URL bar but type the correct path. You will know you wrote it correctly when you get some JSON data. Copy this data and paste it into a file called webfinger.json.
Create a .well-known directory in the web rooot folder of your site. Add the webfinger.json file to this directory. Go back to the webfinger lookup page and check that your username@domain works correctly. If it returns the right json you’re in. Your blog is now a Fediverse instance
The Complicated Alternative
The advice I give for step three is the advice I would have liked to receive. People suggested that I change the htaccess file, which I tried to do, but without success. If you do attempt to change the htaccess file keep an unmodified backup in case you break something. I wouldn’t recommend experimenting with the htaccess file. The webfinger.json solution is simple and intuitive.
Why Does This Matter
The pre-requisites for installing Mastodon instances require permissions that we might not have on the host we are currently using. This limits what we are able to do. By having WordPress and the ActivityPub plugin and Webfinger we are able to bypass several barriers and get a fediverse instance running within minutes and in theory anyone can do it. Anyone that is familiar with WordPress.
And Finally
On Mastodon blog posts are shown as links to articles. People still have to visit the blog. If and when people comment on the mastodon toot those comments are added to the blog post comments, and vice versa.
With Calckey the blog posts that you write in WordPress display natively in Calckey. It does remove formatting however, so that’s something to work on. People that comment on the calckey post will be visible in the blog posts and vice versa. It’s native integration. It works well.
Now, when we write blog posts, people can see them directly in the fediverse, without having to browse away, especially with Calckey integration. In theory your blog post is not a blog post. It’s a note. This seamless integration should bring new life into blog posts. What I find especially amusing is that my blog already has 2100+ posts, in theory. In practice it has many more. People do not see legacy posts. They only see posts from the moment they start following on Mastodon or Calckey.
Playing with technology is fun especially when you could fit it into your shirt pocket. The ipod s one such device. it fits easily into the pocket and can play video, allow for the viewing of photos and more. I also like the user interface, whether the fact the screen is split into text on the left and images on the right or the ability to search through songs and such.
Two of it’s disadvantages are the small click wheel. Whilst easy to get used to it may leave some people with broader fingers slightly frustrated. Another flaw is that when video is dark there’s no image. It’s only good for normally lit subjects. That’s a shame since you’re always in the mood for Film noire on the tube.
The ipod classic has a newer user interface than the ipod I’m using at the moment and the search option is there. The most interesting feature is still the size of the hard drive in relation to the device.
I’d like to get a nano because it’s so small that for a night out it’s more appropriate than the classic but the classic is interesting when you’re in need of a data backup of your laptop for example. My laptop drive is the same as the larger classic so theoretically it’d be a good alternative. Of course small drives are more fragile so less dependable over time.